The release of ‘Piano Miniatures’ is the fourth release by Richard Anthony Jay, but could be seen as his first truly “solo” album. Whereas previous releases has seen him joined by the likes of Peter Gregson, grammy-winner Davy Spillane and members of Britain’s oldest orchestra The Hallé, this digital album consists of 13 solo piano tracks.

“To be honest, solo piano had never interested me much” says Jay. “I’ve always felt that the expressive potential of a piano is limited compared to, say, a string instrument. Once you’ve hit a note on the piano, there’s nothing you can do to it; no dynamic changes, bending, vibrato or anything else”.

But, over time, Jay noticed that the few solo piano pieces he’d recorded for previous releases were among the most popular of his works, with 3 – 4 million plays each on Pandora, and he would often get emails from fans asking for sheet music.

“So I decided to spend a lot of time with the piano and I spent the summer of 2016 doing nothing but writing solo piano music.”

Other than one piece, “Swan” which is based on the score Jay wrote to Catherine Linstrum‘s film ‘Things That Fall From The Sky’, the album is all-new work from that busy summer period: a time which also saw him relocate from his Somerset studio of 10 years, to his home in rural Wiltshire.